(Signed) A. R. Woresley
Lecturer in Chemistry,
Cambridge University
I showed it to Yasmin. “Obviously it doesn’t apply to Woresley,” I said, “because his stuff isn’t going into the freezer. But what do you think of it otherwise? Will it look all right over the signature of kings and geniuses?”
She read it through carefully. “It’s good,” she said. “It’ll do nicely.”
“I’ve won my bet,” I said. “Woresley will have to capitulate now.”
She sat sipping her gin. She was relaxed and amazingly cool. “I have a strange feeling,” she said, “that this whole thing’s actually going to work. At first it sounded ridiculous. But now I can’t see what’s to stop us.”
“Nothing can stop us,” I said. “You’ll win every time so long as you can always reach your man and feed him the powder.”
“It really is fantastic stuff.”
“I found that out in Paris.”
“You don’t think it might give some of the very old ones a heart attack, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said, although I had been wondering the same thing myself.
“I don’t want to leave a trail of corpses around the world,” she said. “Especially the corpses of great and famous men.”
“You won’t,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Take for example Alexander Graham Bell,” she said. “According to you, he is now seventy-two years old. Do you think he could stand up to it?”
“Tough as nuts,” I said. “All the great men are. But I’ll tell you what we might do if it’ll make you feel a bit easier. We’ll regulate the dose according to age. The older they are, the less they’ll get.”
“I’ll buy that,” she said. “It’s a good idea.”
I took Yasmin out and treated her to a superb dinner at the Blue Boar. She deserved it. Then I delivered her safely back to Girton.
12
THE NEXT MORNING, carrying the rubbery thing and the signed letter in my pocket, I went looking for A. R. Woresley. They told me in the Science Building that he had not shown up that morning. So I drove out to his house and rang the bell. The diabolic sister came to the door.
“Arthur’s a bit under the weather,” she said. “What happened?”
“He fell off his bike.”
“Oh dear.”
“He was cycling home in the dark and he collided with a pillar-box.”
“I am sorry. Is he much hurt?”
“He’s bruised all over,” she said.
“Nothing broken, I hope?”
“Well,” she said, and there was an edge of bitterness to her voice, “not bones.”
Oh God, I thought. Oh, Yasmin. What have you done to him?
“Please offer him my sincere condolences,” I said. Then I left.
The following day, a very fragile A. R. WToresley reported for duty.
I waited until I had him alone in the lab, then I placed before him the sheet of chemistry department notepaper containing the legend I had typed out over his own signature. I also dumped about a thousand million of his very own spermatozoa (by now dead) on the bench and said, “I’ve won my bet.”
He stared at the obscene rubbery thing. He read the letter and recognized his signature.
“You bounder!” he cried. “You tricked me!”
“You assaulted a lady.”
“Who typed this?”
“I did.”
He stood there taking it all in.
“All right,” he said. “But what happened to me? I went absolutely crazy. What in God’s name did you do?”
“You had a double dose of Cantharis vesicatoria sudanii,” I said. “The old Blister Beetle. Powerful stuff that.”
He stared at me, comprehension dawning on his face. “So that’s what it was,” he said. “Inside the bloody chocolate, I suppose.”
“Naturally. And if you swallowed it, then so will the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales and Mr. Joseph Conrad and all the rest of them.”
He started pacing up and down the lab, albeit a trifle gingerly. “I told you once before, Cornelius,” he said, “that you are a totally unscrupulous fellow.”
“Absolutely,” I said, grinning.
“Do you know what that woman did to me?”
“I can make a pretty good guess.”
“She’s a witch! She’s a–a vampire! She’s disgusting!”